It is the Saturday before the Saturday before Christmas and I kind of reckoned that next weekend would be just that little bit too close to Christmas Day to do my Christmas Shop so John and I decided to go down today, redeem our loyalty points and get what we could and then we would probably use the little greengrocer-place near Mum and Dad for our fresh veggies when we are down on Friday.

I don't know what the supermarkets are like now in the UK with the run up to the festive season but let's just say it was an absolute pleasure in Paps today - it was, stating the obvious looking at these photos, EMPTY!  No queues anywhere and with most of the things I wanted with a long sell by/use by/eat by date I managed to get just about everything I need for tomorrow when Mum and Dad are scheduled to come up to us and Christmas Eve and then Christmas Day - RESULT!!!

You have to laugh at the Greeks (not Cypriots I hasten to add) who clearly are not impressed or swayed by the political correctness brigade as there was a fine display of new wines in Paps this morning with an eye catching label which translated, even with my limited knowledge of the lingo, to say The Black Sheep - can you imagine the hiatus that this would create in your local branch of Tesco Express - I am sure that no offence was intended but if this had been part of an Apprentice task Lord Sugar would, sure as eggs is eggs, fire the person who thought of it!

On our return home we decided to call into the post office to check to see if anyone (mainly Amazon) loved us and it was an interesting experience because I had my back to the front door sifting through the 'BOX' when I was suddenly surrounded by most of the village children who were trekking round the village with Georgia and Eleni singing carols.  Savvas the Tyreman's daughter Angela was in the front in her lovely bobbly white cardigan - for some reason she seems to love me so I got a special wave which isn't easy when you are in charge of the school triangle!

To complete our Christmas themed Saturday we decided to mooch on over to the winery via Arodes to drop off Mum;s Christmas Card to Liselotte and John.  We thought we might treat ourselves to a spot of lunch and a glass of wine sitting by the fire before returning home to the torture that is Saturday afternoon football with a Sheffield United Supporter.

Liselotte is away so we asked John if he fancied joining us because he is joining her soon and then we wont see them for a while and in the interim it is John's 70th birthday so we thought we could treat him to a pitta.

John had not fully investigated the winery before - even though it is right on his doorstep!  We managed to secure a sofa near the fire and settled down for a nice chat.  Yiannis made sure the ambient temperature was good - it is a large room to heat but he whacked up the reverse air-con so it was fine.



We had a lovely couple of hours, eating and drinking (not me so much as I was driver).  The winery is now on the 2016 vintage of our favourite Agios Onoufrious and it was a very good vintage - we chose to slightly warm our wine so were glad of the fire to do so.

I busied myself in the kitchen this afternoon as it was yet another loss for the Mighty Blades and John was not a happy chappy.  It had been my intention to cheer him up with some home made mince pies - I had all the ingredients but didn't realise I didn't have the bloody tins to cook them - they must have gone rusty and I had thrown them away so he didn't get the delicate little tarts like the ones in the picture he got a big old slab instead!